Need You Now

by James Grippando

  Scully wiped a glob of pizza sauce from his sleeve and said, “That’s probably because he confessed.”

  Connie jumped in. “There’s absolutely no physical evidence.”

  “His fingerprints were at the scene of the crime,” I said, playing devil’s advocate.

  Scully scoffed and shook his head. “Collins was murdered in his car, and Evan Hunt’s written report was found on the front seat. Your father’s fingerprints were on Evan’s report. To me, the only thing the fingerprints prove is that your father handed the report to Manu Robledo, and Robledo gave it to Collins.”

  “That’s the fingerprint evidence?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” said Scully, “lock, stock, and barrel.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Lilly.

  She looked at me from across the table, and I could see the change. Scully and his stash of weapons had temporarily pushed her away from me, but his explanation of the fingerprints seemed to bring her back to my side-perhaps further into my camp, the Mandretti camp, than she’d ever been-as if the last obstacle had been cleared.

  “Your dad really is innocent,” she said.

  No one spoke for the next minute, and Lilly’s words-the conclusion of the only person in the group who could remotely qualify as an outsider-seemed to hang over us.

  “Does that mean that the man who killed Gerry Collins also shot Evan?” asked Connie.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Scully.

  I had my own theory. “Like I told Lilly at Tearrific, I’m convinced that whoever killed Evan was listening to our phone conversation right before he was shot. Evan told me that he cracked the code on the encrypted data we got from Barber. Fifteen minutes later he was dead, and his computer was gone.”

  “Then add my source to the list of suspects,” said Lilly. “But Manu Robledo is still at the top.”

  I reached for my BlackBerry and laid it on the table. “The list is growing,” I said. “There’s a reason I carried both an iPhone and a BlackBerry. Love the apps and the Internet on the iPhone, but my BlackBerry is issued by BOS with enhanced security, as hacker-proof and impenetrable to spyware as the largest Swiss bank in the world can make it.”

  Scully said, “Your point being that anyone who eavesdropped on your BOS BlackBerry…”

  “Is probably working from inside BOS,” I said, finishing Scully’s thought.

  “You mean Joe Barber?” said Lilly.

  “Maybe I do.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Lilly said. “Why would he call us into his executive suite, give us the files that contain the encrypted memorandum about Operation BAQ, and then kill Evan for cracking the code?”

  “He gave me your files, Lilly. You didn’t know the BAQ memo was in there. Maybe he didn’t know, either.”

  Lilly considered it. “Two billion dollars is a lot of money to most of us. But we’re talking about Joe Barber and the Bank of Switzerland. I just don’t see Barber at the heart of a BOS conspiracy to kill Evan Hunt over money.”

  “Barber was deputy secretary of the Treasury. Your source is a former government agent who was working on a secret operation for Treasury. I’m not saying they’re working as a team, but it would appear that there is much more than money at stake.”

  “Money or no money, killing Evan Hunt would be a very desperate act.”

  Scully said, “Desperate men do desperate things. Let me borrow your phone for a couple of hours, Patrick.”

  “For what?”

  “I have a tech expert I work with. Former FBI. If there’s spyware on your BlackBerry, he can unravel it.”

  I slid the phone across the table to him, along with the battery I’d removed at Tearrific.

  Scully said, “Lilly, let’s check yours, too, just in case.”

  “My phone isn’t issued by the bank. I had to give up my BOS BlackBerry when they fired me.”

  “Let’s check it anyway,” said Scully.

  She gave it up, the battery separated from the phone, just like mine. “I suppose if Patrick’s comes back with spyware and mine doesn’t, that would tell us it was a BOS job.”

  “Good point,” I said, “but I have a sixth sense about how this is going to play out. Scully, let’s do the target practice another time. I’m going into the bank tomorrow.”

  “I wouldn’t put it off,” he said.

  “I know, but-”

  Connie’s landline rang, cutting me short. I checked the number. “It’s Agent Henning,” I told the group.

  “She must have heard you say that you’re going into the bank tomorrow,” said Connie. She was kidding, but only half kidding.

  “You told me I could call her on Connie’s phone,” said Lilly, “so I left her a voice mail and told her we were here.”

  “Take it,” said Scully.

  I answered the call, and with just a few words from Andie, I knew that something had changed. I could hear it in her voice.

  “First, let me say that what I’m about to tell you will have no impact on your father’s health. Nothing has changed in that regard. He will remain at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital as long as necessary, and he will continue to get first-rate medical treatment as long as he needs it.”

  “Okay, thank you for that. But I’m getting the feeling that something is definitely wrong.”

  Andie hesitated, and I glanced at the concerned faces around the kitchen table. Finally, Andie’s voice was in my ear.

  “I’m sorry, Patrick. I hate to do this on the phone, but things have happened fast. There is going to be a major change in our working relationship.”

  44

  T raffic out of the city was worse than usual, and Barber was stuck in a limousine that was barely moving. He would have preferred to make the phone call from his home, but there was no telling when that would be. He raised the soundproof partition between him and the driver, then dialed from memory on a special encrypted line to the West Wing of the White House.

  Barber had first met Brett Woods at Saxton Silvers, when they were making their mark and earning tons of money as young bond traders at what was then the premier investment bank on Wall Street. They were friends but highly competitive, not just in their work but in thousand-dollar side bets on everything from whether the next unescorted woman to walk into the bar would be blond or brunette to which drop of rain clinging to the window outside their trading floor would be the first to trickle from top to bottom. The twentysomething cowboys eventually grew up, and the last two decades had seen them in and out of public service, though on very different tracks. Barber worked his way up in Treasury, eventually reaching the number two post. Woods parlayed his international business skills into matters of state, serving as ambassador to Turkey, then deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and finally national security advisor. Woods probably had the most solid business background of any national security advisor since Frank Carlucci in the Reagan administration, and both Woods and Barber had been savvy enough to cash out of Saxton Silvers before the subprime crisis drove the bank into receivership. Some said Barber was jealous of his old friend for snagging such a prestigious White House appointment. Others acknowledged that Barber’s position was one that his friend could never have attained-that it had been hard enough to secure Senate confirmation for Woods’ ambassadorship to Turkey, and that more recent controversy had virtually ensured he could never be named deputy secretary of the Treasury, or anything else that required confirmation by the Senate.

  “I have a meeting with Mongoose later tonight,” Barber said into the telephone.

  “Nothing has changed,” said Woods. “Until we eliminate the threat, it’s business as usual.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that until you hear otherwise, he’s got our backs to the wall. Give him what he wants.”

  “He wants two billion dollars.”

  “Once upon a time, that was a lot of money.”

  “You’re missing my point. He wants Robledo ’s two billion dollars
.”

  “Better it goes to Mongoose than back to Robledo.”

  “That money is gone . The Gerry Collins-to-Lilly Scanlon pipeline is a dead end. She doesn’t know squat. I’ve tried everything, even pitting her against her boyfriend-which backfired, to say the least. It’s time to face facts: Gerry Collins scammed Robledo and us . You’ve heard the tape.”

  Barber was talking about the recorded conversation of Gerry Collins pleading with Robledo for his life after Mongoose had been shot on the boat. The yacht, taken from a drug lord in a forfeiture proceeding and commissioned for use in Operation BAQ, was fully wired for eavesdropping.

  “Yes, I’ve heard the tape,” said Woods.

  “I haven’t been with the bank long, but it’s been long enough to confirm that Collins wasn’t bluffing when he said that Robledo’s money never went to Cushman, that he’d stashed it all away. He brought in Robledo’s money, just like he was supposed to, but he didn’t funnel it to Cushman. He used Lilly Scanlon-made her, Robledo, and us think she was part of the pipeline to Cushman-but he moved the money offshore.”

  “Do your job, Joe.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It may have been pressure from Mongoose that made us find a place for you in BOS management, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea. You’re inside. Find the money.”

  “I can’t! It looks like Collins took that information to the grave.”

  “Forensic accounting can do wonders. Unwind it.”

  “There’s no way. Collins used hawalas . Southeast Asia hawalas , as best I can tell. There’s no paper trail.”

  Barber didn’t have to elaborate. For all the politically correct rhetoric about the value and legitimacy of the informal “nonbanking system” that operates across the globe in the Islamic world, even some Muslim countries had made hawalas illegal because of the way they allowed money to “move” without actually moving, without any paper trail, without any way for law enforcement to detect money laundering. The national security advisor knew better than anyone that hawalas were much more than an efficient way for taxi drivers in Manhattan to send funds back to their family in Pakistan.

  “Shit,” said Woods.

  “We’re teetering on disaster,” said Barber.

  “Don’t get all Chicken Little on me.”

  “We’re in a situation where no one can trace the money, but Robledo has seen a redacted version of my memo identifying Lilly Scanlon and the bank’s Singapore office as Treasury’s best lead.”

  “How do you know he’s seen it?”

  “Mongoose told me that he sent it to him. That was his first threat: play ball, or next time I send the full decrypted version of your memo and blow the lid off Operation BAQ.”

  There was silence on the line. Then the NSA spoke, his tone beyond serious. “The fallout would be bad enough if the American public were to find out that its government knew Cushman was running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme but let it happen.”

  “No one understood the scope of Cushman’s fraud when we formulated Operation BAQ. Sixty billion dollars still sounds like a fantasy world. Our estimates were one-tenth that amount.”

  “There are all kinds of excuses,” said Woods. “No one expected Cushman to kill himself before the feds could swoop down and recover at least some money for the innocent investors. No one anticipated that Cushman would collapse at a time when the entire world economy was in crisis and the financial system itself was teetering on the brink of ruin.”

  “Those are all true statements,” said Barber.

  “This isn’t about the truth. What do you suppose a special congressional oversight committee is going to say about those excuses when it comes out that a certain deputy secretary of the Treasury and the president’s national security advisor not only knew about Cushman but actually wanted him to collapse, in furtherance of Operation BAQ?”

  Hearing the NSA ask the question aloud had conveyed the gravity of the situation. “Go to jail,” said Barber, “go directly to jail.”

  “Exactly,” said Woods. “So, we need to deal with the problem at hand. At this point, Lilly Scanlon is at risk.”

  “Let’s not mince words,” said Barber. “Robledo is going to kill her if she doesn’t come up with that money. And Mongoose is going public with Operation BAQ if I don’t deliver it to him.”

  “So it’s either us or Lilly Scanlon.”

  “Knock off the sarcasm. People have already died over this. The money is gone .”

  “Fix it.”

  “How do you expect me to come up with that kind of money?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Weren’t you one of the geniuses over at Treasury who decided to give BOS about eight billion dollars in stimulus money? Maybe you can go to the board of directors and claw back the bonuses they paid to themselves.”

  “Bite me, all right?”

  “Just find the money somewhere and give Mongoose what he wants.”

  “Then what is your decision on Lilly Scanlon?”

  “Whatever happens there is not our fault. It was Gerry Collins who identified her as his point person, not us.”

  “But I put her name in the memo. I’m not exaggerating here: Robledo will kill her if he doesn’t get his money. He may kill her boyfriend, too.”

  “I’ve said it before, and I don’t think I can be any clearer about this: Robledo can’t get his money back.”

  “Then neutralize Robledo. Or put him in jail.”

  “If Robledo is out of the picture, we’ll never find out who his funders are. Phase two of Operation BAQ fails.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  “The bureau is already on board with this. In fact, it’s already taken care of. I think you know what I’m saying.”

  The NSA wished him luck. The call was over-and, yes, Barber knew what he was saying:

  Lilly Scanlon and Patrick Lloyd were on their own.

  45

  A round eleven o’clock I went outside and sat on the front stoop. Every unit on Connie’s block had the same facade-a couple of concrete steps leading to a storm door with duct tape on the cracked glass. On such a frigid January night I was the only lunatic in the neighborhood sitting outside as if it were mid-July. Connie’s tiny one-bedroom just didn’t offer a place to escape, and after three hours, I desperately needed time away from her and Scully. I was alone for only a few minutes when Lilly joined me.

  “Good news,” she said as she sidled up next to me on the top step. “We finally got the sleeping arrangements figured out.”

  By “we” I knew she meant Connie. “What was the scoutmaster’s decision?” I asked.

  “Connie and I will take the bedroom. The men are in the living room: Scully gets the couch, and you get the air mattress on the floor.”

  “Ah, the air mattress. I knew we’d break out the camping equipment. When do we start the campfire and make the s’mores?”

  “Be nice,” said Lilly.

  I smiled, but Lilly was right. As we sat together in the cold, Lilly’s head against my shoulder, it occurred to me that I had yet to give Connie a proper thank-you for all she had done.

  “Something bothers me about Scully,” she said.

  Lilly’s remark had taken me aback. We were seated side by side, so I couldn’t read her expression, and my attention had been drawn across the street, where a kitten seemed to be losing the race against time to find a warm place to spend the night.

  “Bothers you how?” I asked.

  “It’s mostly a feeling I get.”

  “There must be something behind it.”

  “Well, for one, I don’t like the way he’s been trying to talk you into a gunfight.”

  “He’s training me to protect myself so that I don’t end up like Evan. That’s all.”

  “Maybe. But even more than the guns, it worries me the way Agent Henning cut you loose tonight-just like that. Two hours after Evan was shot, the three of us were in Chinatown trying to figure out how th
e FBI could help us and how we could help the FBI. Another two hours later, we’re sitting at the kitchen table with Scully-whom you haven’t seen since you were a teenager-and Agent Henning calls to tell you that we’re on our own.”

  “Scully didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “I’d hate to think he did,” she said. “But why does it keep gnawing at me?”

  I didn’t have an answer, but she didn’t seem to be waiting for one. It was just something she wanted out in the open, off her chest. I was about to suggest that we rescue that kitten across the street, but a neighbor opened his front door and called the nearly frozen feline inside.

  “Don’t you love happy endings?” asked Lilly. She’d been watching, too.

  “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  She paused before asking the follow-up, but I could feel it coming.

  “Patrick, what do you think is going to happen with us?”

  No easy answer came to me, so I ducked it. “I think Shia LaBeouf will play me and Jillian Michaels will play you in a summer blockbuster that will spin off into a reality show called Wall Street Three: The Biggest Losers .”

  Her puff of laughter crystallized in the night air before me. “Seriously,” she said. “So much has happened in the last few days, but we haven’t really talked about us. I’m just asking: assuming we don’t get shot, strangled, or arrested, where do you and I end up?”

  “That’s a pretty big question,” I said.

  “That’s a pretty vague answer.”

  She was right. “The fact that after four full days of hell we’re sitting here next to each other says a lot, don’t you think?”

  I had intended to speak from the heart, but I could feel from her reaction that my words had fallen short. Maybe I was too tired to do better. Maybe she wished I wasn’t so afraid to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Maybe all the stress since Lilly had dragged me into Puffy’s Tavern on Monday morning had made our six months in Singapore seem like the distant past-made us seem like two different people, even.

  Lilly squeezed my hand gently as she rose and said good night. The cold metal hinges creaked as she pulled open the storm door.